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How did the emergence of capitalism influence women’s work opportunities in 1780-1900?

   The first point to make is that women’s opportunities did change, the extent of this change may be debated but it is important not to deny the existence of this transformation. First of all one has to admit that opportunities for female workers did change undeniably as industrialisation was an extremely complex process which occurred at different times and to varying degrees of intensity in all the different countries of Europe. Anyway as it is argued by historians such as Le Pay, the change that did occur was that many women got jobs in factories and who is to say that this was an ‘opportunity’. It was done out of necessity and lack of alternative which is not as positive as something one would normally associate with a new opportunity which we assume is something favourable.

   Some have argued that the new labour organisation was an incentive for many to marry younger so that beneficial economic partnerships were set up and entry into the workplace could be achieved at an earlier age. The fact that the average marriage age for a women dropped to 24.2 years[1] is not really substantial enough evidence to say that women were marrying young due to new economic priorities. Again many use the fact that the average rate of births per family dropped from 9 to 7 in eighteenth century France [2] as proof that there were new opportunities for women as many were choosing to work rather than stay at home at care for children. Who are we to generalise on the motives of individual women? Yet I would say that rather than the emergence of new opportunity it was simply the old factor of economic necessity that forced women to seek work outside of the home. This had always been a present factor so therefore we are not dealing with new opportunity bit traditional issues. The context has changed, work was no longer centred in the home, women had to leave the house and work in the factories which I think is the most likely explanation for a fall in birth rates. The former theory seems to suggest that a form of careerism was emerging amongst women, that they chose to follow new job opportunities rather than remain within the confines of motherhood .

   Again some would say that the increase in the number of ribbon weavers who sent their children to whet nurses in the Marles region between 1841 and 1865 (the figure peaking at 43.5%)[3] was another sign of increased work opportunities for women. It seems, according to those that support this interpretation of the figures that women no longer had time to breast feed their own offspring as they were so busy fulfilling their new found economic potential. I will repeat my reasons for dismissing this line argument as they are the same as those concerning the drop in the average number of births per family. Women were having to leave the home to find work which meant that they had to hire whet nurses to rear their children. This is still a common phenomenon today and it is illustrative not of growing opportunity but of financial necessity.

   Again it necessary to emphasise the fact that it was continuity rather than change which defines the history of women’s work opportunities during this period. Traditional skills were still retained by the majority of women whether they became integrated into new economic structures or not. For instance as seen in Accampo’s study of family life in Saint Chammond , over 50%of women in the survey stated their occupation as being a silk worker “of some kind”. Yet closer examination of this case study shows us that in reality this did not present these women with any more opportunities than they had previously. Much of this silk weaving was carried out in domestic workshops , there is no way of knowing that the profession was ever organised into a centralised workshop. New technology also worsened prospects for women. With the introduction of the High loom, the traditional skills of women were challenged. It was predominantly men who gained the new skills needed to operate these machines which also meant that it was men who progressed in to the centralised work place. Women were now restricted to the tambour or low warp looms and thus they remained in domestic workshops. Labour was thus , at least in this area was organised on a gender basis and it seems that women were the ones lost out. It is also a general observation that although women had a place in the textile industries they were slowly displaced by the increasingly important ‘heavy ‘ industries such as iron and steel. Textiles remained crucial obviously, but what does it say for women’s work opportunities if they were excluded from such an important sector of industry.

   The textile industry was itself not always the most stable of areas to work in , as we have begun to see. We can take the “war of ribbons” in the Saint Chammond area studied by Accampo, as illustrative of this and shows us the restriction rather than the advancement of women’s opportunities that occurred. “Ribbon production had fallen to one tenth of the size of the trade of Saint Etienne “[4] Here the competition between the two towns significantly reduced women’s work opportunities as this traditional trade suffered due to the increasing competition , an inevitable characteristic of capitalism. If we look at some of the trade s which grew up to replace the ones that had started to decline we can again see that the role for women was not always a positive one. Let us take nail making as our example, women rarely were given training in the new skills necessary so, in a repeat of the situation we have seen already with the introduction of the high loom, it was lack of skills which restricted them. Generally women were confined to much more peripheral roles , usually as result of being the wives of professional nail makers. Often this included running errands , making deliveries and negotiating as proxy for their husbands with other merchants .

   We must also remember that the domestic sector remained a very important one for women during this period. According to work by Scott and Tilly on this subject, over 50% of service employees during this time were domestic servants[5] , so clearly industry was not providing that many new opportunities for women. Again despite a general decline of agriculture during this time as Scott and Tilly ascertain in France many women continued to be employed in agriculture and were not absorbed into the factories . Here we see the pattern of continuity rather than change emerging again. One journalist described the family as being “rooted in custom” in France[6].It was not the types of jobs women had that had changed but merely the location or perhaps the fact that were more women working for wages than there were before . This does not therefore constitute any advance in ‘opportunity’ , as little as 5% of women in France were involved in commerce or large scale business.

   Scott and Tilly make the observation that despite forming a greater part of the urban work force than they had before , it was merely as “the unskilled, casual service sector of the urban economy’. This means that the jobs they had did not vary widely as they remained rooted in the household and they were also of a subordinate nature. In Roubaix in France only 31%of the labour force was female and in the cities where the percentage was higher such as Preston or Stockport the reason was usually that they were towns which relied heavily on the textile industry, the traditional domain of women. Again in the region of Anzin 33.7% of women were employed in the dressmaking industry , a sizeable proportion showing that women did have work available to them but again it was in a traditionally female dominated area. However as more and more women were actively employed it is logical that through the workplace some women were given new opportunities it would be surprising if more and more women were working but none of them ever managed to progress beyond the most basic or menial level in their profession. If nothing else women were given the opportunity to gain a more consistent standard of living with more stable wages and less danger of being affected by economic ‘boom and bust’ cycles and this is something that should not be underestimated.

   A closer look at these women is necessary if we are to decide whether access to new opportunities was provided by the more traditional jobs. What we can see is that life was certainly not easy for these women particularly in Wages undoubtedly did stabilise during these years but this is not to say that during the depressions many women were not left destitute. Often these periods of economic hardship would mean that they would have to seek work in other factories which would put them right at the bottom of the pile in terms of opportunity and prospects. Hours were long and tedious with many complaining of thirteen hour days with no “rest or interruption”[7]. We can see from this that far from providing new opportunities for women they were often exposed to hazardous and exploitative conditions and it seems that the positive factors of gaining more professional autonomy are overwhelmed in the face of the negative side affects.

   Throughout this argument I have been working on the assumption that the word opportunity implies an element of flexibility and choice and we can see that the advance of capitalism put a limit on the job opportunities of women rather than enhanced them viciously a women’s experience depended largely on her position, unmarried women would have more flexibility in terms of where and for haw long they worked. Married women were bound far more to a domestic sphere because they were pre occupied with bearing and raising children. At some point the majority of women were married and had children and were accordingly limited to only sporadic bursts of work. Particularly when the emphasis in industry moved from the private to the public sphere women were left behind. This is hardly suggestive if a flexible , market which could offer opportunity to women.
We should also take into account that woemn held the same jobs often until they died without progressing to any position of higher authority (“women continued to work well into their seventies and eighties or until they died”)[8]

   No matter how much their wages increased or even stabilised it was always given to the family economic unit , no matter how hard they worked and no matter how harsh their lives became they never relinquished their obligation to their familiy. It seems that their spending power was never increased nor were they ever given any chance to exercise any financial independence.It was not until the later stages of capitalist development that women’s roles underwent some changes with an increase in the number of white collar workers being the impetus for this change. However this only came about with the expansion of government and bureaucracy which needed women to work as the secretaries and clerks. Yet during the nineteenth century capitalism was not so refined and it was women who were to suffer because of this.

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[1] Louis Henry – “The Population of France”
[2] Ansley J Cole and T. James Trussell p.203 -211
[3] Accampo- Industrialisation , Family Life and Class Relations p64.
[4] Accampo – Industrialisation , Family Life and Class Relations, p33
[5] Scott and Tilly – p69
[6] Audiganne –Population Ouvrieres p198
[7] J Valserres – TheIndustry of the Loire
[8] Accampo p85

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